Macs may be used by everyone from NASA to the White House, but they can’t shake the perception that they’re designer goods. People readily accept that Macs are good for creatives, but not for real business work, no matter how many times they’ve been proven to simply be great computers for anyone that cares about a good computing experience.

But maybe it’s because Macs are really just so good for creatives. There’s so many little things in OS X that make it great for writing, for one thing, that I think you can easily say it’s the best OS for writers. (more…)

Some say this day would never arrive, some even called it abandon-ware, but Things 2 is finally here. Cultured Code, the developers behind Things for Mac, iPhone and iPad released an updated version of their suite of productivity apps today. Also arriving with the set of updates is Things Cloud – Cultured Code’s sync service that keeps your copies of Things updated on all of your devices.

Keeping open multiple application windows, even multiple browser tabs, can eat up a lot of memory and slow your machine down. But when you’re busy, it’s difficult to sacrifice the ease of having every application and website you need one click away for that extra speed boost.

Click.to makes that trade off a little easier by gathering all of those applications into a single menu interface. By allowing you to access everything in one place, it’s no longer necessary to keep a tab for every web app and a window for every application going at the same time. But how much functionality can Click.to really provide in a single popup menu? We’ll take a look! (more…)

The thing that I love the most about Google Docs is its no frills interface. I’m a vocal advocate of the app and thanks to it, I haven’t used Microsoft Office in the past three years. But, Google Docs isn’t perfect either and has a bunch of quirks that haven’t been addressed properly by Google so far. Offline access and multi account login are two that top my list of gripes.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to review Google Drive for Mac. Unfortunately, it didn’t offer either of the two above mentioned features. But, the app is a step in the right direction. Not discouraged by the launch of an official client, the developers of Collections have ventured with a Mac app of their own to help you organize your cloud documents locally.

With so many task management, GTD, and to-do apps available, for a new task management app to be worth the trouble to try out, it has to give you that extra bang for your buck. A good task management application has to identify a hole and try to fill it, and do a really good job at the same time, or it’s just not worth moving from another task app that’s getting the job done.

Currently available to download for free while in beta, Nokumo is attempting to solve your task management woes, make your workflow more productive, and make it worth your while to switch to a new app. Giving you a space to keep your contacts, events, tasks, and projects under one roof, Nokumo looks to be a powerful application. But can it deliver on its promises?

While recently reviewing Justnotes, a minimal Simplenote client for Mac, I remembered that I still had some data stored in Notes for iOS. Those notes have been around since iOS 4 and sync with email accounts that are set up on the device. However, Apple has now added a native Notes app in Mountain Lion. It syncs with iCloud and will one day be available on the web version of this celestial service as well.

Hopping back and forth between the two note services, I wondered which one I should keep around for daily use. While Apple’s solution does well for basic noting, it’s not the best app out there for more advanced users that avail features like Markdown formatting. On the other hand, iCloud Notes does have well designed native apps, the area that Simplenote falls short in with third-party clients similar to the aforementioned Justnotes. In the end, which one wins me as a steady user? The two services go head-to-head after the break. (more…)

Remember when iCal didn’t look like it had been designed by a fifth grader learning to use KidPix? The only other decision I’ve ever seen Apple make that was so universally panned as the iCal redesign was Ping, but at least you could just turn that off. Whether your aversion towards iCal is due to its tacky design or its cumbersome method of inputting events, you fortunately have no shortage of alternatives when it comes to scheduling your day.

Of course, buried beneath the eye sores is one redeeming quality: iCloud syncing. Many alternative calendars for OS X and iOS still integrate with iCal in order to utilize that syncing power. SmartDay by Left Coast Logic lets you interact with your calendar and to-do lists from the menubar, while adding a few neat features. This isn’t a new concept, so making it an appealing option for Mac users means it needs to introduce some innovative features.

When I need to quickly jot down a thought, remember to do something at work, or create a list of films to go see, I typically use Simplenote. Why, you ask? Because it’s the best service out there for storing plain text notes, and can be accessed from any device that connects to the Internet. The service has also proven to be extremely reliable for me in the past and I’ve never lost any information that I’ve saved onto it, unlike alternatives like 6Wunderkinder’s Wunderkit.

One problem with Simplenote, however, is that there isn’t actually an official app for the Mac, or even Windows for that matter. There are a few third-party clients like Notational Velocity which work well, but have never been quite what I was looking for. Enter Matthias Hochgatterer’s Justnotes. The simple little app does an amazing and beautiful job of making your Simplenote experience on Mac a bit more enjoyable than the traditional web interface.

Some days, it seems to me that we’re in a technological era that demonstrates simultaneous trends of increased utility and decreased complexity. The strive for simplicity is apparent in Mac software, and the effects are often increased productivity and clarity. The best example of this that I can come up with is a growing number of Mac apps that set out to do one thing really well, rather than the swiss-army-knife applications of the past (not that there isn’t still a time and place for those).

Today, I’m going to take a look at one such application called SnipEdges. Developed by Houdah Software, SnipEdges is a new kind of global snippet manager. It uses the confinement of your screen as its management method, rather than a hierarchical window, and it does so to great effect. Let’s dig in, shall we?(more…)

If you use TextExpander much, chances are you don’t actually think about the app itself that much. You’ve added your own shortcuts to it over the years, and now you type them in and they’re automatically expanded without you even thinking. It just becomes another part of your Mac.

This week, Smile Software released the first full new version of TextExpander since 2010. It adds several new features, but if you’re already using TextExpander 3, a quick glance at their new features list might not even make it seem like its worth your time to upgrade. After all, when’s the last time you opened the TextExpander window, anyhow?